It’s amazing how many things we take for granted. Our mind is a truly amazing thing for allowing us to do so.
No invention of mankind even comes close to the raw computing power of your brain. Every thought, emotion, sneeze, action, dream or nightmare comes from an incredible 1.5kg convoluted mass of tissue hovering in your head. It is thanks to the remarkable power of your subconscious mind that you have a heartbeat and the ability to digest food; and it never rests, never sleeps, 24/7 it is on the job of you.
So it bothers me to think that I, at the pinnacle of the evolutionary scale, have an instrument of genius operating behind my forehead, yet at times I am completely stupid.
I was a highly imaginative child often prone to play for hours on my own with imaginary friends (entire villages of them). Perhaps it was because I lived in a make-believe world that I became so naïve, and I mean, truly naïve.
When I was a teen a friend told me that vegetarians were people who didn’t want to harm vegetables (believed that for years), another convinced me her goldfish drown. I was embarrassingly old when I found out about Santa Clause (the only thing that has ever popped a childhood balloon for me with more severity was finding out Walt Disney was a fascist) and throughout my life I have believed 90% of the lies ever told to me.
Interestingly, my radar works perfectly when spotting lies from politicians, tabloids and corporate leaders, Estate Agents and through the grace of 20/20 hindsight. I digress. But make my point at the same time, as no matter how spotless our minds are our thought processes are far from perfect.
The infinite intelligence of our subconscious mind is highly impressionable. In his book, the Power of the Subconscious Mind, Dr Joseph Murphy says, “Your mind reasons in syllogisms. In practical terms, this means that whatever major premise your conscious mind assumes to be true determines the conclusions your subconscious mind will come to, no matter what the particular question or problem may be. If you premises are true, than conclusions must be true.”
No matter how incredible the subconscious mind is it cannot discriminate between what is true, and what is not. It is your conscious mind that acts to protect you from false impressions; whatever the conscious mind of a person believes (through the power of repetition) the subconscious mind will accept and act upon. It has no power to argue or disagree, and no control whatsoever over the premise you imprint on it.
Anyone who repeats to themselves that they are a failure, fat, ugly, born on the wrong side of the tracks, or unlucky, impregnates the subconscious with negative thought, and it acts accordingly. As the genie in the lamp famously decreed, your wish is its command. You are what you think about, or at least, how you think about it. (Instead of “I think, therefore I am”, it is probably more accurate to say, “how I think defines who I am” when considering the power of the subconscious)
So, when someone says think positive, it really isn’t such a bad idea. Negative reinforcement in the mind leads to negative belief and therefore your subjective experience of the world is negative. And according to Dr Murphy, the opposite is also true: “If it is your major premise that virtues are praiseworthy, and kindness is a virtue, you will believe that kindness is praiseworthy and behave accordingly.”
This is how we create our own “reality”, and we do, for every step we take in this world is taken by the mind first. No mind is of itself evil, just as no force of nature is evil. No one is born with the drive to massacre 92 innocent people, or incite a holocaust or fly an airplane over a remote village and destroy entire populated landscapes with bombs in the name of freedom.
There are problems of biblical proportions in this world because of the lengths some people will go to in order to prove how much they believe in what they believe. It is not because they are evil (have you ever considered that evil is live backwards?). It is because they’re major premise is negative.
A belief is just a thought you keep on thinking, it’s true power lies in how much you choose to believe it is relevant to you. So often God’s will/power is mistaken for our own, and the devil is blamed for our misadventures. If we took more responsibility (which is, after all, the ability to respond well) over our own thoughts and where they take us, we would have no reason to blame any external forces for the problems in our world. This would be a huge step towards peace.
Each person’s mind begins perfectly. Yet just like every car you drive out of the showroom is perfect, most people pick up bad driving habits (often from others) that damage the value of the machine.
To illustrate, there is a superb phenomenon that happens in the brain called Pareidolia. Pareidolia (asides from being a word that sends spell check a little crazy) is when random images or sounds are perceived as significant.
For example, seeing the Virgin Mary in a sliced tomato (you may laugh, in 2004 someone paid $28,000 on EBay for a piece of toast with the Virgin Mary on it. The owner said she was, “blessed by the holy toast”), or hearing obscured messages from the devil when playing Neil Diamond songs backwards, are both phenomenon caused by Pareidolia.
These may be far out examples, but as Guy McCardle outlined in a fantastic online essay, “when you consider the smiley logo is just a yellow circle with two dots and a curved line, its remarkable how much we fill in the blanks to make a face.”
It’s all about perception really. Believing is seeing and it is never the other way round. Your subconscious mind is the power that keeps you alive, but it is your power to choose that directs that life. Everyone is responsible for his or her own free will.
Open the mind.
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